I awakened early on Saturday morning, made my coffee in the silence of the house while my sons still slept. Then I sat down on the sofa, drank my coffee and studied one of my bird guides. Birds are endlessly fascinating to me: not just the color of their plumage or their field marks, but also their names. Did you know that there is a Chihuahuan Raven? There are birds called Chuck-will’s-widow, which is named after the sound of its call. Or that there’s a golden-crowned kinglet?
It’s incredible to think that there are over 10,906 different species globally. In the state where I live, there are 475 different wild species of birds. Within the county where I live, there are 212 different species. The ones I most commonly see are American Robins, Cardinals, Blue Jays, Mourning Doves, House Sparrows, Barred Owls and Crows. I delight every time I spot a Carolina Chickadee, a Red-Bellied Woodpecker, an American Goldfinch, a European Starling, an Eastern Bluebird or any type of hawks.
Learning about and watching for different types of birds has become a kind of sacred practice for me. I think about Jesus telling his followers, “Consider the birds of the air…” I love this, along with his telling them first to “Consider the lilies of the field…” As Emily Dickinson wrote in one of her letters, “The only Commandment I ever obeyed - ‘Consider the Lilies’.” We know she also considered the birds of the air because she wrote 264 of her poems contain birds.
I think of Saint Francis preaching to the birds out of his profound sense of connection to the natural world. In a biography of Saint Francis, Omer Englebert recounts Francis’ homily to the multitude of birds that had gathered in the branches of the trees, “My little sisters, many are the bonds which unite us to God. And your duty is to praise Him everywhere and always, because He has let you free to fly wherever you will, and has given you a double and threefold covering and the beautiful plumage you wear…” It is said that the birds listened until Francis had finished and then they flew away. As someone who has always felt like an outsider in organized religion, whenever I think about Francis preaching to birds, I think: That is a church I could join.
Emily Dickinson would easily agree, as she once wrote:
Some keep the Sabbath going to Church – I keep it, staying at Home – With a Bobolink for a Chorister – And an Orchard, for a Dome – Some keep the Sabbath in Surplice – I, just wear my Wings – And instead of tolling the Bell, for Church, Our little Sexton – sings. God preaches, a noted Clergyman – And the sermon is never long, So instead of getting to Heaven, at last – I’m going, all along. Last week had been a difficult week. My Father had been even more difficult, disagreeable and angry with me in his dementia. A teacher friend of mine recently had surgery for a serious form of cancer and she had just been told that, even with treatment, she would have, at best, two more years to live. Some dear friends of mine had put her mother in hospice care at the beginning of the week and she had died by Friday. Along with the continued news about the wars and the divisions coming with the upcoming elections, the world felt heavy and sorrowful.
Friday morning, I took my coffee and went out to work the car line at the elementary school where I work. Every morning, I go out in rain or shine and open car doors for kids. On this particular morning, I stood there during one of the lulls and watched as the sun rose accompanied by birdsong. Despite all the tragedies and difficulties, in that moment all I could think was: Thank you.
It was a moment of gratitude for the beauty that can still be found in this world when we allow it to reach us. Such moments remind me to approach the world with profound humility.
Of course, with continued worries about the natural world with the effects of global warming and the fact that our continued urbanization is destroying more and more natural habitats, I worry about the birds. Just in 2023, twenty-one different species of birds went extinct. Four other species are at imminent risk. Along with the nearly billion deaths of birds in the United States due to birds colliding with man-made structures from cars to planes to buildings.
In one of his journals, the Trappist monk Thomas Merton wrote, “Someone will say: you worry about birds. Why not worry about people? I worry about both birds and people. We are in the world and part of it, and we are destroying everything because we are destroying ourselves spiritually, morally and in every way. It is all part of the same sickness, it all hangs together.”
We have stopped considering the birds. We have forgotten how to see birds and the natural world as sacred, and that we are all spiritually connected. I am reminded and renewed of this belief every single time I pause and give my attention to nature, to birds. My mindfulness leads to the awareness. I become more fully rooted in the world, in myself and beyond myself to something much greater. I am in communion with all around me.
Another monk, Thich Naht Hanh wrote, “You only need to walk in mindfulness, making peaceful, happy steps on our planet. Breathe deeply, and enjoy your breathing. Be aware that the sky is blue and the birds' songs are beautiful.”
To consider the birds is to strive and struggle against a culture that prefers us to be continually consuming. Wendell Berry understands the danger of this when he warns, “In this state of total consumerism-which is to say a state of helpless dependence on things and services and ideas and motives that we have forgotten how to provide ourselves-all meaningful contact between ourselves and the earth is broken. We do not understand the earth in terms either of what it offers us or of what it requires of us, and I think it is the rule that people inevitably destroy what they do not understand.”
When we remove ourselves from constant consumption to quiet communion with nature, we are performing a sacramental act because we are seeing something as sacred by the attention that we give to it. So I go out into the world with my binoculars and quietly watch for birds. Like any holy act, it gives me hope. Maybe Emily Dickinson is right, maybe “Hope is the thing with feathers.”
I am so glad that you have time with the birds. There is so much to learn from them. As I live here in the city, we really only see the sparrows, and I am grateful for that, but I so miss the variety that we find at our Motherhouse in the country. Listening to this right now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBD8Cz6IJRg Sorry that your week was so hard. That's a lot to carry.
This is lovely, thank you. I really appreciate how accessible bird diversity is and how many ways there are to engage with them, without them the world would be sorely lacking.